


like a shell upon a beach

by coppertears



Series: these days [3]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: M/M, Multi, Slow Burn, Summer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-06-18 05:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15479073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coppertears/pseuds/coppertears
Summary: In the summer they had left behind them, there was a street of broken concrete patches, a pack of gum, and a single strip of negatives.





	1. Chapter 1

_In the summer they had left behind them, there was a street of broken concrete patches, a pack of gum, and a single strip of negatives._

 

*

 

There's a street that runs along the side of his apartment block where no one ever goes. At least none that Kyungsoo has seen. He knows because it's in the harsh light of the morning that he finds it gaping at him, the emptiness of that street, and when the sun's just high enough the shadow of a lone lamppost cuts the asphalt into half.

Sometimes he thinks maybe the street exists just for him to wonder about.

He doesn't wonder long because the bus arrives, and then Kyungsoo rides it right down to the boardwalk where the shop he works part-time in stands. Temperatures are rising in these parts. The ocean that's a strip of sand away washes the heat off with froth and salt spray; Kyungsoo walks by it, in the sunsets before he goes home, and sits a while by the shore with his shoes off.

The bus stops by the boardwalk. Kyungsoo nods at the driver as he gets off, his hand coming up to pull the brim of his cap lower. It's blistering the moment he's out. He can almost hear his mother, laughing in bemusement, when a month ago he'd told her he'd work in his uncle's seaside cafe. "You're going to be boiled alive there, and you inherited my sensitive skin," she'd said to him as he'd packed. There were--and are--a lot of things he could have replied to her then.

For sunburnt skin, you apply aloe. Suncream before you step out, longsleeves to cover up most of your body, and a cap. There are ways to treat sky-sore wounds and there are Wikipedia pages for that. Kyungsoo's not sure what his mother applies to the sting of a silent home, with his brother off to the military, and his father off on another journey. When he's trickling time away in his rented apartment, he feels the guilt of leaving her to the silence hit him.

He guesses that mothers know most what to do when the family they've built feel the need to fly off.

The little bell his uncle places just inside the shop door tinkles as Kyungsoo enters. It's a homey place, his uncle's shop. He likes it because it's perfect for summer, a little hideaway of dark wooden shelves, benches with cushions, brightly-colored tables, and mismatching sofas. Kyungsoo still doesn't know the books by heart but they're plenty, a little collection his aunt has grown through the years and needs a garden for. But he does know the menu on the chalkboard hanging just behind the cashier, because he's the one who writes it in every day, their usuals and their specials.

His uncle only every drops by once a week, but mostly he just leaves it to Kyungsoo to manage. Soo-man has always been fond of him; Kyungsoo's mother swears that she'd gotten the 'soo' in his name from her brother, but Kyungsoo always rolls his eyes at that inside joke.

There are five other staff members that his uncle employs. Baekhyun manages the till on Kyungsoo's off days, or even with him on the busiest afternoons. Chanyeol is the guy who mixes up the drinks and flirts with Baekhyun. Yixing, sleepy-eyed, comes in the morning to bake a storm of delicate little cakes and cream-filled pastries. Minseok, the cook, arrives an hour before lunchtime to prep the kitchen for the people who'd like something savoury to eat. Sehun is the other guy who brews the coffee and blends smoothies, but Kyungsoo has a theory that Chanyeol's engineered it so he's taken over all of Sehun's shifts that have Baekhyun manning the till. Kyungsoo likes talking to them--they're good people, with quirky personalities to boot, and Baekhyun especially has a habit of cracking jokes when he thinks Kyungsoo's expression is too serious.

He likes the people, too, who duck their way into the shop. There are the villagers who come by to read the books they've left off the day before, trying to escape the all-intrusive heat. There are the tourists, in their wide-brimmed hats and loose clothing, taking pictures in the quaint corners of the cafe. Travellers come and go, on their way to somewhere else, taking a break from the road before going on again. Kyungsoo barely speaks to any of them but he likes listening. It's why he's here, in any case; the bustle in the shop, with the sounds and the characters filling it in, make him feel the least lonely he's been since the month they'd sent his brother off to enlistment and his father to yet another trip.

Yixing steps in a few minutes after Kyungsoo gets behind the counter. He's as sleepy-eyed as always, dimpling a smile at Kyungsoo before he steps into the kitchen in the back of the shop. In another minute, Kyungsoo can hear the baking pans come down, and the pouring of ingredients that tells him the sweet smells of baked goods will be filtering into the rest of the shop soon. This early, there are no customers coming in--Kyungsoo doesn't expect a soul until at least another hour. He climbs onto the stool just behind the till and reaches down to unzip the front pocket of his backpack.

He sends a postcard to his mother every week. This one he'd gotten from a souvenir stall further down the boardwalk, a garish square of painted sea and sand and sky, but with an ice cream man in the foreground fending off a child's errant red balloon. He'd laughed when he'd seen it. He hopes it makes his mother laugh too, as he scrawls the first line of a short letter to her: _Thanks for the tub of aloe you sent, it seems my sensitive skin won't burn just yet._

The bell above the shop door tinkles. A wave of heat sneaks in, before the door closes and the cool interior banishes the heat away.

Kyungsoo wrinkles his nose. In all technicality, the shop is open, but he's guessing the visitor must not be from the town because the locals are notorious for sleeping in. He finishes the sentence he'd been in the middle of writing.

"Excuse me," a deep voice says, and Kyungsoo signs the back of the postcard with a flourish. Then he looks up at the customer--a boy, not more than 20, maybe, whose hair is crammed in a red baseball cap. He purses his lips as Kyungsoo stares back at him.

"It's part of the charm," his uncle had laughed once, when Kyungsoo had looked up at a customer owlishly instead of greeting them or softening his expression with a smile. "Every single one of my staff members have their own style."

The last was true: Baekhyun liked to sing his greetings, Chanyeol tended to be overenthusiastic, and Sehun had a certain coolness to his demeanour. Kyungsoo's signature, it seemed, was to wait the customer out, a picture of not-wholly-feigned innocence.

So far, everyone's gotten used to it, but it seems to unnerve this one. He shuffles his feet from side to side, before sticking his hands in his pockets and letting out a breath. "Um, I was wondering if I could read a book?"

Kyungsoo nods. "You can." He dips down to tuck the postcard back inside the front pocket of his backpack and surfaces to an expression of incredulity on the customer's face. "Well? Go on, then."

"I don't have to buy anything?"

"You can," Kyungsoo shrugs. He knows his uncle doesn't really care. Strangely enough, the shop is quite profitable for a library masquerading as a cafe, but Kyungsoo thinks he can see the draw. It's the hush of the shelves, the temptation of Yixing's baking, the puppy-like feel of Chanyeol's smile. People pour in, day after day.

The boy squints at him. "You know, you could be a little more welcoming," he says, but it doesn't sound like a reprimand. It comes out flat, more of an observation, and it's not like Kyungsoo feels inclined to act on it.

He blinks back at him.

The boy sighs. "I'll just go read a book in that corner." He waves in a vague direction. "I'll get some food later."

Kyungsoo tilts his head, and with another sigh, the boy moves on. When the customer settled in whatever corner of his choosing, Kyungsoo leans back in his stool. He'll send the postcard later, he thinks; drop it in the iron grey mailbox just off the bus stop.

The boy stays until sunset, just a little before the end of Kyungsoo's shift, finishing three books, a slice of Yixing's strawberry shortcake, and a bowl of dumplings (the day's special). Kyungsoo's gaze snags on him during a lull in the afternoon, and he wonders if the boy's a traveller, the same way he wonders about every person who comes inside the shop.

He lets the thought go. He won't know from seeing the boy for a day, the same way he can never know for sure the hundreds of people who have come and gone throughout the weeks he's been at the till.

 

*

 

The boy comes again on Tuesday morning and leaves again just before sunset. On Wednesday he has Yixing's sugar-dusted doughnuts for lunch, and by Friday afternoon, he's right up against the till laughing with Chanyeol. There's a wrinkle marring the line of his nose as he sips at the tiny cup of coffee Chanyeol had persuaded him into buying, and Kyungsoo can see that he regrets giving in. Baekhyun is flitting between them and the other customers at the tables--it's a full day, what with the heat at its peak, and Kyungsoo takes careful note of how the boy--who he is still certain isn't a local--subtly edges the bitter liquid out of the cup and into the soil of a decorative plant pot hidden out of view.

His gaze intersects with Kyungsoo's then, and he flushes with what looks like guilt. He brings the cup up slowly and breaks the eye contact.

Kyungsoo snorts to himself. He doesn't judge people for not liking coffee, and he knows his uncle had hired Chanyeol precisely because of his skill at getting people to buy things. Kyungsoo's role is mostly administrative, as he's found that aside from him, only Minseok cares about keeping everything neat and in perfect order. A bunch of sweet old ladies, too, like to come in to coo their order of tea and cakes at him. People like his seeming cluelessness, Baekhyun likes to say, and Chanyeol always pipes in the caveat that maybe others like the challenge of getting a word or expression out of Kyungsoo.

"So how do you like the coffee, Jongin?" Chanyeol asks, wiping off the counter.

Kyungsoo tears his gaze away, but he listens, curious. A new customer comes in and he busies himself with taking her order, using as few words as possible, and she smiles brightly at him as she goes to find a free table. He hears a slight choking sound coming from Jongin.

"It was, uh, good?"

"Good?" Chanyeol asks, sounding critical. Kyungsoo can feel him building up to an interrogation. The guy, standing at a height that Kyungsoo doesn't bother to know about because all that matters is that Chanyeol is much, much taller than he is, can be intimidating when he gets going. "Good in what way?"

Kyungsoo wonders how much of that coffee Jongin had even drunk, beyond that small sip he'd taken while Chanyeol had been watching. There's a lady who waves him over for assistance reaching a book out of her reach. He goes to help her, and when he gets back, Chanyeol is asking if Jongin thinks the acidity of the coffee had been just right.

"Knock it off, Chanyeol," Baekhyun says, bumping his hip against Kyungsoo's as he rings up the bill for a couple who's finished their meal. "People drink coffee to wake up, not write odes about it."

"But I just want to know why he finds it good," Chanyeol says, frowning.

"Actually, there's a book I need to pick back up," Jongin says, pasting on a smile and beginning to back away.

Chanyeol looks like he's about to protest. Kyungsoo, for one of the few moments in his life, stops just listening and speaks. "Would you like the red velvet?"

Baekhyun raises his eyebrows at him. Jongin just looks bewildered.

"Red velvet," Kyungsoo repeats. "The red velvet cookies that Yixing baked today. Would you like some?"

Jongin likes Yixing's pastries, he's noticed. All the days that he's been here, he's gotten one of the pastries. He's not sure if Jongin genuinely has a sweet tooth. But then again Yixing's pastries are good, regardless of how sweet they are, and Kyungsoo himself likes to take some home because they taste comforting after a busy day on his feet.

"Who are you asking?" Jongin blurts out, at the same time as Baekhyun asks, "You're giving them for free?"

Kyungsoo blinks. "Why would I give them for free?"

Baekhyun shakes his head, confused. "Why would you offer the cookies out of nowhere?"

Chanyeol laughs, and it's a full-bodied one, all slapping counter and falling to the floor on his knees. It's why his trousers end up with so much dust on them from the knees down.

"It's not out of nowhere." Kyungsoo shrugs. He turns back to the till. "He's always ordering the baked goods, and he's about to read another book. Just thought he might like to order the cookies."

It's not really something to laugh at, he muses. Or even out of the ordinary. Kyungsoo observes; it's his thing, the way Yixing's competence at baking is, the way Baekhyun easily charms customers is.

"Are they good?" Jongin ventures, drifting to the front of the counter. He's almost as tall as Chanyeol is, bending his knees further even though he's already bent at the waist, just so he can get a peek at the cookies plated at the center of the display.

"Don't think Yixing has ever disappointed with his baking," Kyungsoo says, and he knows it isn't an answer. The cookies are good. Yixing had run them by him the day before, because Kyungsoo has taste buds even though he may not know how to bake, and they'd been warm with the right amount of sweetness. Jongin will like them. He doesn't know why he knows, but… he just knows.

Jongin looks up to contemplate him. Kyungsoo looks right back. He's never been one to shy from holding gazes, but Jongin is skittery, nervous, and yet again he's the first to break contact. "I'll take one," he decides. There's an undercurrent of nerves running through his words. Kyungsoo wonders where that had come from--where Jongin had come from.

He doesn't ask. Instead he picks out a cookie and a small plate, and serves it up on a tray as Jongin passes him the money. Baekhyun logs the purchase and Kyungsoo drops the exact change in. The metal belly of the cash drawer rings with the falling of the coins.

"Thanks," Jongin says, and he's looking over Kyungsoo's head this time. He lingers on the thought of what it is exactly Jongin is thanking him for, but he accepts it with a shrug of his shoulders again, and Jongin goes to his usual spot.

He'll walk by the beach after his shift, he thinks. He'll dip his toes in the water. There's a street by his apartment block that never seems to hold people in it; maybe he'll walk through it tomorrow to see where it leads.

 

*

  
The-boy-who-is-not-a-local becomes a fixture at the SUM Cafe.

There's an alcove tucked right beside a draped window, where Kyungsoo will usually take Jongin's orders to when he comes during his shift. The pillows have become molded to the shape of Jongin's body--when he leans against them, when he tucks them under his arm to prop his book up, when he uses a pile of them as an armrest. He goes through the books as though they are water.

Yixing knows to make the sugar-dusted doughnuts and red velvet cookies every day now. Jongin had come in early one day, just in time to catch the baker walking out of the kitchen, and had exclaimed that the doughnuts and cookies were his favorites.

To Kyungsoo, it's a little perplexing to be announcing one's favorites out in the open, but it's turned to Yixing ensuring that those items are part of his daily menu so he guesses there are advantages.

Once in a while, Chanyeol likes to experiment with drinks and cajole Jongin into tasting them. Kyungsoo's witnessed their interactions more than once. It's amusing how Jongin almost always ends up giving into something he won't like. It's even more amusing how Chanyeol gets him to pay up every time, and how Jongin gets away with pouring most of the drink into the potted plant. It'd been Kyungsoo's job to water it, but with Jongin and Chanyeol around, it's one aspect he no longer worries about.

Sehun and Jongin get along, too. They talk about a shared topic, often, and once Sehun had even taken his lunch break with Jongin. Baekhyun likes to mother Jongin about when he can, fussing over his books and his food, and letting Jongin slide by sometimes when he forgets to return a book to its proper place. Minseok and Jongin have never met, yet, but Kyungsoo thinks they'll get along as well. There's just something about the-boy-who-is-not-a-local, as Kyungsoo likes to call him in his head.

Because no matter how many days of the week Jongin drops by, Kyungsoo knows the look of someone who's leaving; someone whose stay is as unpredictable as the volume of people dropping by SUM Cafe for the day.

With Kyungsoo, Jongin is a little less open, but he supposes it might because of his own reservation. He's curious about Jongin, yes, and observant enough to take in his habits even though he's sequestered away to his little corner. Jongin likes to sit up straight when the book is reaching its climax. He swears under his breath when something bad happens; he puts the book down when he's flustered about where he thinks it's going.

Jongin is guarded around Kyungsoo. He can never seem to hold his gaze--the eye contact they share always feels fragile, a thread that Jongin snaps with a quick side-eye or a blink. He still doesn't seem to know how to work with the shortness of Kyungsoo's sentences, his off-beat replies. It feels--interesting, Kyungsoo decides, to watch someone be not quite so sure about what to do with him. But there's a camaraderie there, he supposes. In the stiltedness of their daily interactions, there's a relationship tangling its way through somehow, just as much as in Jongin's interactions with the other staff members.

The week after he offers the red velvet cookies to Jongin, he brings him a worn-out Sylvia Plath paperback and a cup of hot chocolate, along with the bill for the drink. Jongin stares up at him, wide-eyed. He takes the items anyway. Kyungsoo wants to ask if Jongin's ever considered saying no to anything that's been brought or made for him. It's why Chanyeol can always get him to be his test subject.

Jongin says thanks, and Kyungsoo tells him that Sylvia Plath's writing makes him feel inadequate. "Like the smallest living being you can be," he says, setting the hot chocolate on top of the side table beside the alcove. "But it also makes you feel as though you have someone there beside you who feels the same way you do."

He watches Jongin take it in. There's a stubborn jut to his chin, and his jaw works with words he can't seem to get out. "I'll--keep that in mind," he says, haltingly, and Kyungsoo tilts his head to acknowledge it before returning to the counter.

That week, his postcard to his mother is from the cramped stationery store a street away from his apartment block. It'd been little bigger than a postage stamp, maybe, for a place where letters are made, but Kyungsoo had found a cardboard rectangle of a campfire by the sea. There were no bodies but there were stars, and on the front of the postcard they were yellow pinpricks, low-resolution. He'd written, _There are interesting things happening around here,_ and after a great blot when he'd put the pen down for too long, he'd continued: _I wish you'd come with me to see them._

His uncle had extended the invite to his mother as well, but she'd refused. Said she'd rather stay in their home. Kyungsoo was old enough to go on his own, and maybe he could make friends in that seaside town.

Some nights Kyungsoo looks out his window at the lone lamppost and wishes his mother were with him, but he likes it here. Summer is for random weekly postcards, and a cafe rattling with as many people as it does the books on its selves, and the sea at sundown with the rest of his life on a far-away shore.

The next week, he asks Jongin to come early again, and Yixing prepares a bowlful of decadent chocolate mousse over a chiffon base. Kyungsoo brings the dessert to Jongin, along with cups of coffee-flavored milk, and he digs into his own share as Jongin watches. It's minutes before Jongin brings himself to finish his chocolate mousse, but he does.

"You're a little afraid of me, aren't you," Kyungsoo says. It's not a question. Jongin nearly chokes on the mousse trying to answer it, anyway. Kyungsoo waves it off. "That's fine, of course. Most people are. But it's really just my eyesight--I can't see anything so I squint and stare hard."

"You don't speak much either," Jongin ventures. He's still looking at Kyungsoo as though by doing so, he can take down the pieces that make up Kyungsoo and rearrange them in a way that makes sense to him.

"No," Kyungsoo says. "You're interesting, though. I've never met someone who wants so badly to leave and yet stays anchored in one place, like you."

Jongin blinks. The light catches on his eyelashes when he does that. Jongin is pretty, Kyungsoo supposes, pretty and handsome at the same time. The stubble on his chin contrasts against the sensual curve of his lower lip. When he speaks, it juts out with his stubbornness, and somehow this one fact is archived in Kyungsoo's mental folder of observations.

There are many of them, in his head. Observations of people, not just Jongin, who have walked through his life and then some. He can still remember the feeling of each one, of the tingle of realization or how settled it feels to come to familiarize oneself with a foreign object. He remembers understanding the clench of his father's hand around the suitcase handles when he is about to leave. The meaning behind his mother baking cookies on Saturday afternoons. His brother's much-handled habit of flipping the corners of his bedsheets and folding his clothes in perfect squares.

He remembers the first time he'd looked at a girl and found her beautiful, and how he'd seen the boy beside her and thought him beautiful too.

The bell tinkles and Kyungsoo rises--this time, he is the one to break the thread between them. Snap, just like that. "Yixing will be adding in the mousse," he says, matter-of-factly, and he goes to greet the customer at the door. It's teenager, jittery, and Kyungsoo seats him at a table by the window, the one where there is a vase holding a single red rose inside. He offers tea for a stomach upset with butterflies, and the teenager just nods. It's moments later when his date arrives and he lights up, like the sun on the days when it isn't melting the world down, and Kyungsoo allows himself a small smile.

He gets his weekly postcard again at the souvenir stall. It's a little faded, a picture of a child with a seashell pressed up against one ear, and Kyungsoo traces the nebulous spiral of it with his finger. He flips it over, tries to think of what to say. "There's a boy," he murmurs to himself, but instead he writes: _Saw a first date happen today. The boy was so nervous he knocked his glass over twice; lucky there was nothing inside it._

That week, Jongin manages to drink an entire cup of coffee because by now Chanyeol's learned to make it in the form that Jongin can bear to drink it--with three sugars and five capfuls of milk.

 _There's a boy_ , Kyungsoo thinks to himself, as he twirls the pen around with his fingers and drops the postcard off at the mailbox. He hopes his mother smiles when she gets it.


	2. Chapter 2

__

_He finds letters under his pillow--about a dozen of them, on creased notebook paper. They speak of a boy he knows._

*

There are days, of course, when Kyungsoo wakes up in his bed, in his mostly-bare single-room apartment, and stares up at the ceiling. Those are his dead days. It isn't that he knows anything about death, in particular. It's just that in those moments, if he slows his breathing down enough, there's all this quiet that worms into his head and he can barely feel the thud of his heart. It's as though he's wrapped in cotton. Then the honking of cars outside jolts him from the almost-trance he's fallen into, and he sits up, electrified.

Walking, talking; it is a routine, how he patterns his steps in and around his apartment. 

In the comforting silence of a just-opened cafe, he sits in his stool in front of the till and wonders about time. He's been in this seaside town for a couple of months, and there's only one more of those to pass before he's hauling off on his uncle's dusty flatbed, back on the road to home. The prospect never feels as daunting as it does now, when there's the expanse of unoccupied tables and armchairs in front of him, and still a little over half of summer to get through.

Yixing bustles in, early as always, and later so does Chanyeol with a yawning mouth and eyes blinking back tears. Baekhyun isn't in until four. Sehun's on the night shift this week, after trading off with Chanyeol for the rest of the day; there's no mistaking now that Chanyeol's made some kind of resolve to keep to Baekhyun's side as much as he can. Kyungsoo can't blame him, because Kyungsoo knows about time and how it moves without waiting, on overflow. Baekhyun's a college student, that much Kyungsoo's heard about, and come three weeks from now, he'll be fetched by his older brother to return to school in the city. Chanyeol also isn't a local but there are other cities left unnamed that he'll be heading to. 

If there's anything Kyungsoo's learned from the people passing through, it's that humanity prefers to collide at a single point rather than to redraw maps. It isn't about convenience; it's about laws of attraction, and of gravity, and of objects in close quarters falling into each other. It's about taking chances when it's staring you in the face. Kyungsoo can relate to that, a little bit. He's done much of the same. 

A trio of old ladies wearing pastel-colored bonnets come in for their usual Monday brunch. They fuss over the chalkboard menu, like always, and the one with scarlet lips and pearl-tipped nails leans in to pinch Kyungsoo's cheek because he always reminds her of her son. It's the same order they end up with--a long time ago, they'd discovered that the teatime menu of finger foods and weakly-brewed tea in delicate china were all they could manage to nibble on without fear of indigestion. They proceed to their corner that about half of the locals know is theirs and therefore avoid taking. 

Jongin doesn't come in until after the worst of the lunch hour has passed. He looks frazzled, with sea wind-tousled hair, and wearing a hastily buttoned floral shirt and board shorts. _There's a boy_ , Kyungsoo thinks, a tattoo of a thought in his head, but he shakes his head to clear it away. 

"Do you still have the cookies?" Jongin asks, a hopeful lilt in his voice. Kyungsoo nods and slides over to the display, placing two of Yixing's red velvet cookies on a plate, before ringing up the purchase on the till. Chanyeol sidles over for a fraction of a minute, talking Jongin into a sip of some caramel-drizzled coffee. Kyungsoo has to hide a surprised laugh at the way Jongin's face wrinkles in utter dislike.

"Someone got the book you were reading the other day," Kyungsoo comments when Jongin is picking up his tray. "Might want to try something new."

Jongin raises an eyebrow. His grip on the tray stutters, just a little, and Kyungsoo asks him if he needs help. Jongin shakes his head. "You're talking to me."

Kyungsoo frowns. "I've been talking to you for a while, yes."

"Not--well. Not in the way that you seem to know me."

"I don't know you," Kyungsoo says, and it's simple, because it's also the truth. Honesty in itself isn't a complicated thing. People just make it so.

"Right, you don't." Jongin chuckles. "Thanks for the heads-up."

Kyungsoo doesn't watch him go. He keeps his gaze fixated on the till, taking extra care to replace the coins, and when he looks up, his gaze snags on the trio of old ladies again.

He's always been an observant person. When he wants to say something, he says it, because there's no room for pretense on the same stage where everyone is performing. His wide eyes, taking in as much information as they possibly can, have caused him trouble more than once--a yell, a backhand across the face, from people who can't bear to be taken apart by a stranger. People who are frightened of vulnerability because of what it may reveal about them. 

Kyungsoo finds it fascinating, always. The boy who'd yelled at him for staring had had eyes that held fear in them, before he'd lashed out. The scarlet-lipped lady's son had built life in a far-away city, and except for the sombre look he'd had on the faded wallet-sized photo that his mother kept in her wallet, had looked nothing at all like Kyungsoo.

He always observes, it's always how he knows the stories people find curled on their tongues but never actually tell. Jongin isn't an exception. He's just part of what the tide brings in, though he seems to be riding the wave for longer than necessary. 

What is unusual is that Jongin is observing him right back.

Kyungsoo can feel his gaze on him, now; he knows the weight, has some inkling of it when people turn to catch his eyes, and either let the moment pass or hold it. He doesn't acknowledge it, though. Still, it does make him wonder what Jongin sees in Kyungsoo's polite greetings to those who come up to the till, and the brief seconds he lounges around with Chanyeol and hears the barista talk of plans that come alive outside of a seaside town.

The postcard for the week is of a sunset over the beach. Kyungsoo chooses it partly because it's pretty, and partly because a child drops it, and is about to screw her face up into a good cry at the sight of exasperation on her mother's face. Children don't really know what they're doing, Kyungsoo muses. It's still beyond them to think of hurt and that's why they show their truths, their vulnerability, their fear. He picks up the postcard from the floor, and the mother's face turns apologetic to him in an instant. At the counter, he buys the postcard, and asks the mother now standing behind him how old her child is.

"Three," she says, and Kyungsoo nods. It'll be a long while before the child will break her mother's heart with intent, rather than the clumsiness of decisions made in youth.

She'll forgive her, then. His own mother had after three phone calls riddled with static in the weeks after he'd left.

*

On his way out of the shop later that Friday, Jongin curls a hand over his forearm and Kyungsoo's only mildly surprised.

His satchel's still slung over his shoulder. There's a worn bit of leather on the strap that his fingers tend to rub into when he's seeking some far-reaching, unnamed comfort, and they do so now, running a zigzag pattern over the familiar spot. "What is it?" he asks, his voice even. 

There are times when he forgets. Maybe it's because of how he puts himself in his own corner, observing people from a distance, but--there are times when Kyungsoo forgets how unused he can be to nearness, to touch. Chanyeol and Baekhyun had gotten him used to their clinginess by daily conditioning. They'd sweep in for the day and brush past him with their hands, ruffle his hair, or bump their hips against his (Baekhyun, most of all). Otherwise, his skin-on-skin contact with any other person is limited. Rationed. It isn't that Kyungsoo actively avoids it--well, maybe he does to some extent--but it's a rare enough occurrence for him to just be this side of taken aback.

Jongin approaching him, though, he's not flustered by. It seems a natural progression from the sparse words they exchange day after day, at the till or by his reading corner, and their mutual observation of each other. Kyungsoo thinks again of gravity. It's not that they're two forces of equal and opposite strength, exactly, but he thinks maybe they can be that. Maybe they can find their way to each other. 

Touch is but a manifestation of thought, after all. When people reach out to hold you, to reassure you, or to call you back--there's a message there, and Kyungsoo stills to wait for it.

"I see you walking out to the shoreline after work," Jongin says. Kyungsoo'd expected him to stutter, but right now he doesn't. His face is lined with determination. It's interesting to see it dawn on his face. "Would you mind if I walked with you this afternoon?"

Kyungsoo's nail almost digs into the worn-down spot. _This_ is unexpected. In a sense, it's an intrusion of space and his sense of peace. As he watches Jongin, however, it's the uncertainty he finds lurking beneath the sureness of his gaze and the slight tremble in his fingers, still wrapped 'round Kyungsoo's forearm, that has him nodding.

"I won't be staying that long," he says, not bothering to glance back. He can hear Jongin scrambling to keep apace. They weave through the people milling about on the boardwalk, past tables with colorful umbrellas spread out overhead, and down to the sand. Kyungsoo can feel the grit on his shoes, the slip and slide as rubber treads try to find purchase on the grains. Halfway through, he slips them off, and he hears Jongin's grunt behind him as he, too, takes off his leather thongs. Kyungsoo walks the rest of the way barefoot with Jongin, silent, beside him. 

They don't talk until they're seated right by the water's edge, the day-old froth lapping at their toes. The sun is setting, a brilliant fire on the horizon, and Kyungsoo watches it sink across Jongin's face like a spotlight; it casts his features golden, and for a moment, Jongin seems to burn. 

"Those postcards you write," Jongin starts. He pauses, not seeming to know how to go on, and he licks his lips. "I see them, when you're sitting at the till. You were writing on one, too, the day I first saw you. Is it… Do you…" He takes a breath. "Do you send them somewhere far away?"

Kyungsoo stares at the side of his face. He knows Jongin can feel it, but the other man doesn't appear to acknowledge it. "It depends on what you mean when you say 'far away'," he allows. The postcards are a routine for him, a comforting part of his week. It helps him feel anchored when he so badly wants to drift. 

Jongin often seems like someone who also wants to drift. Kyungsoo doesn't know if it makes him safe, or a risk to take. But then that begs the question of why it's important for him to know which one Jongin is, in the first place.

"I guess it means anywhere that's not here," Jongin says, after a while. "I guess it means anywhere that's not part of this town, where it feels like everything is nearer than they appear to be, until you see people writing letters at the till and cars driving off."

Kyungsoo's hands dig through the grains, searching. He finds a pebble, smooth to the touch, and he brings his arm just far back enough before throwing the pebble as hard as he can. The angle is all wrong; the pebble flies in a harsh arc before sinking into the water. "Why is it important for you to know?"

Jongin's gaze flickers over to him. The sunset dances along the line of his jaw, still in that stubborn jut. "It isn't… important, exactly," he says. "I just want to understand."

Kyungsoo holds his gaze. This time Jongin waits, and doesn't seem to ache to break away. "Far away is quite subjective. But yes, I guess for me, it is someplace I'd consider 'far away'," he says. He stands and brushes the sand as much as he can off the seat of his trousers. Jongin just looks up at him, not bothering to mirror his movement. He considers the question that's pulling at his tongue. There's Jongin's vulnerability in the palms of his hands, if he chooses to voice it, but at the end of the day it's not really why he asks. 

"But for you, is this 'far away' enough, Jongin?"

The sunset carves hollows into Jongin's face. It's the shadow that does it; that hint of darkness that pulls the words from Kyungsoo's lips. He asks because _there's a boy_ , and even when he's standing at the till to sell him red velvet cookies, it always feels like Jongin is running. There's no direction, but he can feel him radiating that rush even when he's sitting, back straight and limbs quiet, in his reading corner.

It's enough for him to voice it out. It's another way of helping Jongin understand. Kyungsoo doesn't wait for an answer, not really, and Jongin doesn't give one. He just turns to leave, and Jongin returns to watching the dying moments of the sunset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated every Sunday.
> 
> This is dreadfully short, I'm sorry, but I may add a wee bit more in the coming week. I did update on the day I said I would, though! Small victories.
> 
> Also, slow burn is slow burn. I'm quite patient (although it is nearing the end of Kyungsoo's hypothetical summer).


	3. Chapter 3

*

_The window panes are cold to the touch when he presses his knuckles against them: a parting gift from the rain._

*

Kyungsoo wakes to a fine mist of rain obscuring the sun. In this seaside town, there are no seasons other than summer, so he looks at the droplets cascading down the other side of the glass and wonders if he has an umbrella lying around. It's colder today than most days. The wind whistles when he steps out. 

From the cafe, later, he sees the froth forming on the waves--the sea no longer the clear-mirror blue of a cloudless sky. The storm is building out there. It means most of the stalls will be closed up, because their owners are not ones to have sufficient rain gear that can protect the merchandise. There are always idiots who may try to surf in this weather. Still, what it all means is that there will be few customers in today, and they will mostly be travellers looking for some respite from the downpour. Kyungsoo's shoes are still squeaking wet from having waited for a bus delayed by the inclement weather.

It's the day he usually posts his letters to his mother, but there's no chance he'll find an open shop to buy from today. He can wait for tomorrow. Still, Kyungsoo likes the comforting feeling of maintaining routines, and he has no guarantee it will be any drier tomorrow anyway. For all he knows a freak storm may have blown in-shore. At least his apartment is stocked with emergency rations. 

Most of the cafe staff come in, as always--Yixing with flour marks on his cheek, Chanyeol pulling the brim of his cap lower as he walks in, and Minseok in the most casual outfit Kyungsoo's ever seen the older man in. It's not Baekhyun's shift today. Sehun texts that he won't be able to cover the late evening shift, and Kyungsoo responds that it's fine; with the rain, they may not stay open all that late.

His predictions are on mark. The first few customers trickling in are travellers, just passing through the seaside town, but visibility has gotten quite poor and they're hungry. They ask Kyungsoo what's on the lunch menu and he has Minseok make some soup because they look chilled to the bone from their car's air conditioning. The next group is comprised of a bunch of locals who have lived in the seaside town forever. They settle down to Yixing's cupcakes and cookies, and mugs of rich hot chocolate, as they sit and chat about sunnier days.

Jongin blows in a quarter to three, still blinking the rain away from his eyes when he walks up to the counter. Kyungsoo is halfway through a makeshift postcard of beach doodles and the beginnings of a mouth that, he notices with some alarm, mimics the curve of Jongin's, when he looks up to see the man himself dripping wet in front of him.

"No umbrella?" Kyungsoo asks. It's without malice because he hadn't had one earlier this morning. He'd had to run to the nearest convenience store, and by the time he'd gotten to the bus stop fairly sure that his new purchase wouldn't fly him away like a Mary Poppins scene, he'd been behind schedule.

Jongin shakes his head and gives him a rueful grin. "Not something I was told to expect here," he says. He points at a chocolate chip cookie instead of red velvet. As Kyungsoo transfers the cookie onto a plate, he finds Jongin's gaze flickering over the makeshift postcard that he's left lying on top of the cash drawer. The sketched mouth looks as though it will swallow the frothing sea.

"Okay?"

Jongin's head snaps back up. A flush comes over his cheekbones; it suits him, but Kyungsoo's beginning to suspect that a lot of things suit Jongin. When he's sitting in his usual spot with an open book propped over his knee, he gives off the impression of a person in a painting--not because he looks unreal, but because there's a certain gracefulness to his stillness. 

"Yeah, okay," Jongin says, taking the tray and passing Kyungsoo his money. He lingers, for a bit, as Kyungsoo rings up the purchase. "I like your drawings," he finally gets out, the words just shy of sounding stilted. He jerks his chin in a rough direction that Kyungsoo supposes is meant to draw some sort of path to the postcard. "They seem whimsical."

"Whimsical," Kyungsoo repeats, and watches an emotion settle itself underneath the uneasiness of Jongin's gaze. "Alright."

For a second, it seems as though a laugh might slip past Jongin's lips. He shakes his head and steps away. A girl, in a raincoat dripping puddles on the floor, takes his place.

It rains through the entire afternoon as well. Jongin comes up to the counter twice, asking for more cookies, and then a mug of hot chocolate. There's a growing stack of books that he's finished by now, to the point that Kyungsoo has learned to live with letting the stack build until the end of the week before replacing them on the shelves.

At sunset, he requests Chanyeol if he can take over the counter for a bit. He just needs a moment to drop the postcard in the mail. 

Jongin is all the way over at his spot by the window. His fingers are drumming a rhythm on the inside of his thigh, one that Kyungsoo cannot possibly decipher. He tries to work it out, anyway, as he makes the split-second decision to come over to him with the postcard tucked inside a notebook, loosely held in his hand.

"I'm dropping off my mail today," he says--announces, really--and for a moment feels silly.

Jongin glances up from beneath his lashes. Kyungsoo can see the moment when he pulls away from whatever turmoil there is building in the book he's reading. His fingers settle. He looks at Kyungsoo, gaze tracing over his features so clinically that Kyungsoo almost builds up to a flush. The moment breaks. Jongin chews on his lower lip as he marks his place with what looks to be a brochure from the cafe, and sets aside the book.

When Kyungsoo turns, he hears the rustle of Jongin unfolding himself behind him. He doesn't need to look back to know he's earned his shadow. 

It is drizzling now. They walk in relative silence under Kyungsoo's newly-purchased umbrella, bright pink against the gray-washed world, and he doesn't question Jongin's hand folding over his on the handle. He lets go. Jongin adjusts, and they slosh their way through the forming puddles on the boardwalk to the mailbox. 

The metal is cold to Kyungsoo's touch when he slips it in. It falls with the lightest thump that Kyungsoo's not quite sure he hasn't imagined. Beside him, Jongin radiates heat and a certain deference, holding the umbrella so it's tilted more over Kyungsoo. His shoulder is soaked. For a moment, Kyungsoo thinks about brushing against that heat, curling into it; it's just a moment, and it passes. He looks up at Jongin instead, who is looking down at the mailbox, as though he can see inside to the pile of letters, and even deeper into the contents they hide. 

There's a letter written inside Jongin, Kyungsoo can see now. It's all but marked in X's and O's and the terrifying uncertainty of whether it will merit a reply. Few runaways ever stand by the post without that letter sunk deep within them. It just never seems to bear their signatures; no names, no words, for what they've let go of, what they're still in the process of living. Kyungsoo watches as, in the minutes when the rain falls shyly around them, Jongin writes down that letter, thumbs out his name, presses a kiss. He has lips that seem like they press kisses at the end. He waits and sees the moment when Jongin folds that letter in and envelops it where it cannot be sent. 

"Let's go," Kyungsoo says, the words soft in his mouth. It startles Jongin anyway. The rain continues to drip down his right arm.

He nods.

The walk back isn't quiet. For once, Kyungsoo fills it with stories of the people behind storefronts, of the families long-raised in this town, and of the cafe regulars. He doesn't talk about himself. Instead he talks about how he lives, here: the apartment, the air swirling with dust motes when he wakes, the steam of well-brewed coffee. Jongin nods and hums and Kyungsoo doesn't mind.

He sends out letters to ease some of the weight that's built up since the day he'd ended up in this town. Jongin is only just learning how far and how hard that weight tugs down a heart. It will be more time still to learn how to segment it, and then to send it back where it came from.

They're at the doorstep, Jongin closing the umbrella in a brief shower of collected droplets, when he speaks again. 

"There's a band coming over," he says, "in that bar right across the shore."

Kyungsoo knows which bar it is; it's the only popular one, with more sea breeze than liquor, and salt-stained tongues rather than limes. He raises his eyebrows at Jongin. "Yes," he says, though he doesn't know which band it is, really. Most days it hardly matters. In a town with few names it's always a novelty. 

Jongin looks down at him. He is very rain-splattered. His cheeks glisten with the skies, and there's droplet beading on his upper lip. It all feels very far away to Kyungsoo, the urge to kiss him once again; to know what it feels like after it's been pressed into paper, brushed by the wind from how far he's run. 

"Will you come with me?" he asks, and Kyungsoo is acquiescing before the question is even fully out. He takes the umbrella from Jongin; the latter makes an aborted move to encircle his wrist, but Kyungsoo pretends to not notice it. 

There's something to be said about anticipation. They can hold each other's wrists by the beach with the named and the unnamed, and music scattering the stillness about them. Not now, not at the doorstep of the cafe with Kyungsoo's shoulder about to push the glass door inward and Jongin about to pour a life out through his gaze.

He reaches his hand up, though, lets it frame Jongin's face. He touches that droplet on his upper lip and feels it flatten, feels the near-tremble of Jongin's breath as he wipes it away. 

Gods, but there is no breaking that look easily, and yet Kyungsoo does. 

"It's at eight in the evening tomorrow," Jongin says, helpless. 

"Yes," Kyungsoo says, and he steps right back into the cafe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here and there and back again.

**Author's Note:**

> Updated every Sunday.
> 
> I don't think there will be more than two chapters/parts to this, but then... up until a minute ago, I didn't think this would be anything other than a very brief one-shot. So we'll hold the curtain call until then.
> 
> Title comes from the lovely song, "You Picked Me," a fine frenzy of sound on summer days. The heat always does things to the mind.


End file.
